


hush

by Hinterlands



Series: leviathan songs [1]
Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Low Chaos (Dishonored), and also amazingly introspective, corvo is a good dad, emily has frequent nightmares, when is this set? we just don't know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 11:59:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7933828
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hinterlands/pseuds/Hinterlands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Corvo wakes to sound in darkness, and one hand immediately strays for the hilt of his sword, laying crosswise upon the nearby stool.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hush

Corvo wakes to sound in darkness, and one hand immediately strays for the hilt of his sword, laying crosswise upon the nearby stool.

No moonlight penetrates the grime coating the numerous, cramped windows lining the room, and the sounds—irregular scuffling, breathy sobs; his first thought is _weeper_ , but the vocalizations are more high and plaintive than raspy and senseless, and there is no reaction to the protesting _creak_ of the bedframe as he shifts his weight upon it, no instinctive moving-towards, seeking another warm body.

A steadying breath, his eyes sliding shut— _you must be blind before you can see_ —and the room gradually comes into focus as the skin of his left hand sizzles faintly, the darkness resolving itself into a dull brown, the objects near him—table, stool, bedhead, sword—limned in flickering yellow behind his eyelids. He slides from the mattress, crouches, soundless, creeps forward, towards the junction where the far walls meet, and finds—

—Emily, twisting and writhing in slumber upon a makeshift palette of pilfered blankets and a deflated, stained pillow; her breathing is harsh and irregular, coming in deep, shaky, fluttering gasps, and the tension in Corvo dissipates as though it had simply never been. He had been permissive when she crept across the corrugated metal bridge connecting their buildings in the early morning to inhabit the room with a book in hand, intending to evade Callista and her dreaded lessons, true, but to _sleep_ here, with nothing but a few thin blankets separating her from the splintered floorboards and salt-sharp drafts…?

( _”It makes me feel better,”_ she had said; Corvo feels his heart lurch, a quick, painful tug.)

Soundless, he edges forward, slides one arm beneath her legs, the other behind her back, and lifts; for the most part, the motion is fluid, effortless, Emily rake-thin and bird-boned in his grasp.

(He has often pondered how she might look when her growth has concluded, who she might more resemble; would she inherit Jessamine’s slender build and angular face, her effortless grace in motion? His broad shoulders and dark, deep-set eyes?

In the end, he supposes that it’s better that she does not appear to take after him at all; to bear resemblance to a man so much maligned in these times—even, possibly, for some years after--would be more a burden than a blessing, after all.)

So, conducting Emily towards the bed—each step careful, so as not to jostle her against his chest, and his hands are gentler than they have a right to be, after all they have wrought, as he lays her down upon the narrow bed, tugs the blanket up to her chin; she is still and quiet, momentarily calm, but her hands come up to grip the edges of the blanket nonetheless, her face contorting, a brief spasm of fear. Corvo, ever-so-softly, bids her to _hush_.

There is silence, for a time, as he fumbles for a tinderbox to light the half-melted stubs of wax strewn haphazardly across the table at the bed’s side; the candlelight casts a sickly pallor over Emily’s face—calm, now, caught between the verges of consciousness and slumber, the edge where dreams limp on insubstantial legs to die—and Corvo slowly, deliberately, begins to check over his equipment—that his sword has kept its edge, that none of the sleep-darts, with their sickly-green, vaporous glow, have shattered in transit.

(He keeps only a few of the mundane variety on his person; death is rote in these times, perhaps, but not something _he_ can administer at a moment’s notice, on a moment’s whim. It would not—it would not be _right_ , true, but the lines between _rightness_ and _wrongness_ have bloated and blurred, become hopelessly indistinct—perhaps it matters not what is _right_ , but what is necessary for survival. Perhaps. But if he can do with a strong arm, pressed up and back against an unsuspecting throat, a well-aimed dart meant only to induce a short, painless slumber, then the deaths are not necessary—the deaths, and the inevitable turmoil they drag in their wake.)

He may attempt to rationalize his reticence through moral means, he reflects, idly, one palm braced against the table, but in truth, the restraint is for Emily—she deserves a better inheritance than a city populated only by bloated, weeping corpses and perpetually-gorging rats, a river clogged by the tumbledown debris of entire districts.

A moment’s pause; then, soft, strained, urgent; “Corvo.” Then, as he turns, again, pitched higher, accompanied by the irregular creaking of the bed’s frame as Emily once again begins to thrash in the throes of another unquiet dream; “Corvo!”

One knee upon the mattress as he leans in, cups her cheek with one palm, his voice gravelly with disuse, but as soothing as he can manage; “I’m here.” Again, as her uneasy writhing dies down to a whole-body tremor; “I’m here.”

After a moment, she appears to pass more deeply into unconsciousness, and he leans down, sweeps her sweat-slick bangs aside to press his lips to her forehead, lightly. That nothing will ever hurt her so deeply, so grievously, again as long as he _is_ here is a promise unspoken, but banded in iron, bound to the soul. And he will remain by her throughout her ascendancy; that, too, is an assumption made, and one that he intends to uphold.

(He will teach her the intricacies of swordplay; how to bare steel, how to dodge an enemy’s slashing blade with almost preternatural fluidity, where to thrust or scrape to merely incapacitate—where to aim with the intent to kill. She will never be so helpless again, the world willing—never so powerless to direct her own fate, her own forward motion. _His daughter_ \--he feels the shape of the words, the weight of them there, just behind his teeth, and, hesitantly, discards them. Suspected, but not known; and it is better that way.)

Emily is silent, now, and the haze of night peering past the windowpanes indicates that dawn is some way off; for now, Corvo collects his equipment—mask, bolts, crossbow, the disused pistol, mentally marked _emergencies only_ —and bundles it away, before taking a seat just at the edge of the mattress, feet planted solidly on the floor, his eyes closed, staticky dark-vision flickering in and out.

He sits, silent and motionless, sword resting across his knees, through the long dark.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't count myself as officially involved in a fandom until I've written a fic for it, so--hi, Dishonored fandom. I hope you're ready for me.
> 
> (On a more serious note, I'm of the opinion that these two hardly get enough interactions in the base game before everything goes to absolute shit, so I resolved to write some Good Dad Corvo taking care of his royal daughter.)


End file.
